Sojourner Truth Lecture and Award Series Is Tomorrow

Posted: April 18, 2001 at 1:00 am, Last Updated: November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

The African American Studies Program and the Women’s Studies Research and Resource Center present the second annual Sojourner Truth Lecture and Award series on Thursday, April 19. The program begins at noon in the Johnson Center Cinema. The series features distinguished scholars from various disciplines who discuss pertinent issues regarding women of color in the United States, Caribbean, and African countries. The Sojourner Truth award will be given to a member of the George Mason community who has made significant contributions to the understanding of race and gender. A book signing follows the program.

Bernice Johnson Reagon — scholar, composer, singer, and activist — will deliver this year’s lecture. Reagon, curator emerita at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and distinguished professor of history at American University, founded the music group Sweet Honey in the Rock and has served as the group’s artistic director for the past 23 years. She served as principal scholar, conceptual producer, and host of the Peabody Award-winning 1994 radio series Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions, produced by National Public Radio and the Smithsonian Institution.

The Sojourner Truth Lecture and Award is named after Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), a slave, abolitionist, revivalist preacher, and women’s rights advocate. Well known for her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech before the Akron, Ohio, Women’s Rights Convention in 1851, Truth refused to capitulate women’s rights for the sake of black rights and refused to deny the reality of gender in addressing the problem of race.

For more information, call the African American Studies Program at x34080.